could not be allowed to retain the impression that Ben might have fathered her child. She was not to blame for the misunderstanding. But for Ben’s sake and for the baby’s, she needed to keep on trying to ensure that Andreas accepted the truth.
Early evening that same day, Andreas brought the powerful Lamborghini to a throaty halt in front of the thatched cottage.
He had leant on Vanessa until she had buckled and told him where Hope was. Hope might well be in need of a break in which to recoup her energies, but he was not willing to accept that she had to be protected from him. Even though he had missed a family christening in Athens, he was feeling good about what he was doing. In fact he was aware of a general improvement in his mood. That was no surprise to him. When had he ever done anything quite so unselfish? Naturally he was proud of himself. Although Hope had no claim on him and even less right to his consideration, he had set aside his perfectly justifiable anger and understandable distaste to check that she was all right.
Hope clambered out of the bath because she was terrified of falling asleep in the water. Wrapping her streaming body in a velour towel imprinted with zoo animals, she padded back into the bedroom. From the low window there she saw Andreas springing out of an elegant long, low silver car. He hit the knocker on the front door.
‘Oh, heck…’ Her first glance was into the mirror to note that, yes, her hair was damp and messy and piled on top of her head where it was anchored by a canary-yellow band. And her face was hot pink. And nobody was ever likely to suggest that her figure was enhanced by a bulky towel in primary colours. Was her tummy really that…? She flipped sideways and wished she hadn’t bothered. Sometimes ignorance could be bliss.
Yet even in profile, Andreas looked stunning, his bold, bronzed features vibrant with dark, intrinsically male beauty. Tall and well built, he emanated powerful energy. Her hand flew up to tug off the band restraining her hair. In a panic, she finger-combed the resulting tangle. The door knocker went a second time. Breathless and reckless as a teenager, terrified he would decide she was out and leave if she did not hurry, she raced down the stairs as though her feet had wings and dragged open the door.
His dark, deep-set gaze narrowed below thick black lashes and roamed from the lush pink cupid’s bow of her mouth to the voluptuous creamy swell of her breasts. Not even the sight of a pink elephant marching across the towel could dim Andreas’s appreciation of her fabulous shape. His eyes flared to smouldering gold.
Her mouth ran dry. ‘How did you find out where I was?’
‘Vanessa told me.’
Hope was amazed. ‘She…did?’
‘I said I was concerned about you. That unnerved her. Suddenly she didn’t want the responsibility of withholding information from me,’ Andreas explained lazily.
‘I’m glad…we do need to talk,’ Hope conceded quietly, backing towards the stairs. ‘If you wait in the sitting room, I’ll get dressed.’
‘Why bother?’ Andreas was tracking her every tiny move with keen male attention.
‘Because I’m not wearing enough clothes,’ she mumbled uncertainly, finding it incredibly hard to concentrate beneath Andreas’s steady appraisal.
‘You’re not wearing any,’ Andreas contradicted huskily. ‘Do you hear me complaining?’
‘Don’t talk like that,’ she begged, her tension rising because she knew she wanted him to talk like that to her. In fact her protest was a truly appalling lie when she knew that more than anything else in the world at that moment she wanted him to kiss her.
Her retreat from the door had exposed the jacket slung down carelessly across the window seat. Andreas treated the garment to a fulminating scrutiny. His hard jaw line clenched taut. ‘Whose jacket is that? Daddy Bear’s?’
Disconcerted, Hope followed the path of his eyes. Her fine brows pleated when she saw that Ben, who had departed a couple of hours earlier, had forgotten to take his jacket with him.
‘Hope?’ Andreas prompted icily. ‘That’s a man’s jacket.’
Never in her life until then had Hope been so tempted to tell a lie for the sake of peace. While she was wondering whether an elderly gardener with expensive tastes could be the likely owner of a designer leather jacket, time ran out.
‘Is Campbell here?’ Andreas slung at her wrathfully. ‘Upstairs in the bedroom?’
Hope exploded into emotive speech, ‘No, of course not. He’s not here but he would have every right to be if he wanted to be! Vanessa may have given me permission to be here but the cottage belongs to her family and Ben’s.’
Andreas paced forward a step. His lean, strong face was set like stone, his brilliant eyes hard as steel. ‘When was Campbell here?’
‘That’s none of your business,’ Hope dared shakily.
His intent gaze flared to a volatile gold. ‘You made it my business again. Either you’re with him or you’re alone. If you’re still with him, I want to know about it!’
‘I’m not discussing Ben with you. You have no right to ask me these questions—’
‘If you’re still involved with Campbell, why did you approach me?’ Andreas launched at her in raw condemnation.
Hope lifted her head high, turquoise eyes dark with stress. ‘This is your baby. It’s got nothing to do with Ben, so just leave him out of things—’
‘That’s a fantasy…I finished with you months ago. How the hell could it be my baby?’ Andreas thundered at her in fierce frustration.
Hope flinched from the violence flaring like a silent lightning strike in the atmosphere. ‘In another week, I’ll be six months pregnant. Six months ago I hadn’t even met Ben Campbell.’
Andreas had fallen very still. He fixed sceptical eyes on her and stared. ‘You can’t be six months pregnant.’
‘The doctor says that some women…of my build,’ she selected with care, ‘don’t look like they’re expecting until the last couple of months.’
His normal healthy colour noticeably absent below his bronzed skin, Andreas coiled his restive hands into powerful fists and half lifted his arms in emphasis. ‘There’s no way you can be six months pregnant,’ he repeated, less stridently it was true, but the repetition of that assurance broke the thin hold she had on her control.
‘Isn’t there?’ Hope gasped, angry pink blooming in her cheeks. ‘You could not be more wrong. Furthermore, if it’s anyone’s fault I’m going to be a mother, it’s yours!’
‘Mine?’ Andreas echoed. ‘You start telling me this crazy story—’
‘What crazy story would that be? You got me pregnant. Who was it who said that he would take care of the precautions?’ Hope shouted at him in a tempestuous fury of frustration and pain. ‘Who assured me that I could safely leave everything to you? And then who didn’t bother when it didn’t suit him? In the shower, in the middle of the night, on the bathroom floor…that time in the limo…’
A slow, dulled rise of blood below his olive skin demarcated the superb slant of his high cheekbones
‘How
